A skeptical leftist's, or post-capitalist's, or eco-socialist's blog, including skepticism about leftism (and related things under other labels), but even more about other issues of politics. Free of duopoly and minor party ties. Also, a skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more.
Note: Labels can help describe people but should never be used to pin them to an anthill.
As seen at Washington Babylon and other fine establishments
Her austerity moves after the Great Recession, even years after, even to the point of nearly tanking all the PIIGS, and definitely tanking Greece, have been assessed and reassesed plenty.
No, per this UnHerd piece, it's time to reassess her foreign policy meshing with her domestic policy.
This is the Angela Merkel who, per her infamous der Spiegel interview, discussed by me in depth here, deliberately used the Minsk Accords as a sort of "appeasement" to give Ukraine more time to at least moderately up-kit its army, and even more, up-train it to something supposedly like Western standards (though we're now seeing how realistic that is).
Per UnHerd, that's the same Merkel who couldn't or wouldn't get Germany off Russian natural gas. It's the Germany who allegedly abetted Volkswagen's diesel emissions cheating scandal, both in the US and in the EU. It's the Merkel who, despite the problems with nuclear power, killed all German power plants after Fukushima without any Plan B on board, and instead, without solar or wind enough to come close to replacing them, started burning more coal — and not just coal, but that dirty-for-coal lignite shit that we stopped burning in US coal-fired plants years ago. And, this coming from a Ph.D. scientist who knew better on not only climate change in particular but air pollution in general. Tis true that, since 1990, Germany has cut emissions more than the US, but that's not totally a fair comparison. First, that includes shutting down most of East Germany's dirty industry and second, it's based on a flat population. In the last 15-plus years, the US has done better.
It's the Merkel who, doubling down on old-fashioned German automotive excellence, didn't prod German carmakers into hybrids, sees them behind the curve on full electrics especially vis-a-vis China, and between that and German utility costs, per that Unherd piece, one wonders just how unstable the German car industry is.
And, the piece goes on to note that the economic weakness that has resulted from this has given a new boost to the Alternativ für Deutschland, along with it being the only party other than die Linke that opposes the war in Ukraine. Wolfgang Munchau says AfD had plateaued after getting its initial boost from opposing her opening the doors on refugee immigration.
Back to the economy. Munchau says it was a form of neo-mercantilism, which makes it all the more stupid for pissing Russia off when you're relying on its natural gas to literally fuel that.
The German economic situation is so bad that, beyond alt-ish websites, the AP just wrote in depth about it.
As normal, not all of these posts were necessarily from December, but were the 10 most read in the past month.
No. 1 was my take on former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's admitting that the Minsk Accords were nothing but a form of appeasement, to string out Putin long enough to rearm Ukraine with modern NATO armament (and training). No wonder Putin doesn't trust NATO.
No. 2 was my noting that a significant minority of Ukrainians (and that's without allowing for Zelenskyy having repressed oppo media and oppo political parties even before the Russian invasion), like a majority of Americans, want peace talks. A Twitter warmonger claimed that I had undercut myself on a back-and-forth on this. Rather, I told him that he had confirmed himself as a warmonger before I muted the conversation. (People talk about the wonkiness etc of Twitter's API, but the fact that, in a conversation, you can mute it, leave it, or mute, or block, the one problematic individual kind of belie that.)
No. 4 came after the Brittney Griner-Viktor Bout prisoner swap. I speculated about Paul Whelan either being an actual spy, a corporate spy, or a spy wannabe.
No. 6 was just before Winter Storm Elliott and was about cryptocurrency mining sucking at the ERCOT teat, and how both Rethugs and ConservaDems are OK with that.
No. 7 was about two Dem senators in the Texas Lege crafting narrow bills to partially address problems on a couple of big issues to appeal to Republicans. I remain at least halfway skeptical.
No. 8 was my one COVID-related post of the month. It was about Dr. Peter Hotez, and how, under the "let's talk science" surface, he's a Blue Anon gaslighter, grifter, and tribalist. (Side note: I have a semi-blistering post about the "People's CDC," and its butt-hurt-ness over the Emma Green piece, teed up.
As referenced in a piece by Scott Ritter earlier this week, here's her long and broad interview (English-language website version) with der Spiegel recently, which includes, but is not limited to, the run-up to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Several pull quotes related to her (with French president François Hollande in the era of their inking) using the Minsk Accords, which I have blogged about in depth, as a stall game. Per this, and Ritter's piece, Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ will surely applaud this, when in reality it's far below the level of applause.
Start with this, which is not a direct quote, and is not the first reference to Minsk, but is the key backgrounder:
Merkel suddenly recalls that in addition to watching "The Crown" and "Babylon Berlin" with all her free time, she also took in "Munich: The Edge of War," the Netflix film about Neville Chamberlain’s role in the run-up to World War II. Jeremy Irons played Chamberlain. She liked it because it shows Churchill’s predecessor in a different light – not just as a frightened pawn for Hitler, but as a strategist who gave his country the buffer it needed to prepare for the German attack. In her telling, the Munich of 1938 sounds a bit like Bucharest of 2008. She believes that back then, and then later during the Minsk talks, she was able to buy the time Ukraine needed to better fend off the Russian attack. She says it is now a strong, well-fortified country. Back then, she is certain, it would have been overrun by Putin’s troops.
Can't be much clearer than that.
Much later, she ropes in Dear Leader:
"He, of course, has been out of office for longer than me. I have the impression that we agree when it comes to Putin," she says. "After Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, we did all we could to prevent further Russian attacks on Ukraine and we coordinated our sanctions down to the last detail."
I don't doubt that. Near the end of the piece, she notes that her Minsk-related shuttle diplomacy included trips to DC.
Spiegel interviews others, including former SPD head and Merkel vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel. Gabriel himself says that the NordStream 2 deal, negotiated between Merkel and Putin, included its shutter at times like this.
It's interesting, per both herself and Ritter's take, that Putin didn't catch on sooner. And, Ritter's right on one big thing: Putin's pissed off. That said, if he DID "catch on" before launching the war, it's mind-boggling that he didn't prepare to fight it better, making allowance for Ukrainian defensive improvement.
(Update: Per an NPR piece about how NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg worries about the war expanding, Putin has said he wishes he invaded earlier, though he doesn't talk about why he didn't catch on earlier, if he did not. That said, and, as reflected in the Brittney Griner exchange, and ignored by the likes of John Bolton, it has lead to fallout. Putin is specific:
“Eventually we will have to negotiate an agreement,” he said. “But after such statements there is an issue of trust. Trust is close to zero. I repeatedly have said that we are ready for an agreement, but it makes us think, think about whom we are dealing with.”
There you go.)
Not just this duplicitousness, though. is discussed in the wide-ranging interview. She also seems to think there is a kinder, gentler, inner George W. Bush tormented over the Iraq War. No, really:
Did she see how George W. Bush recently confused the war in Ukraine with the Iraq War during a recent public appearance, and then tried to pass it off by joking about his age?
She shakes her head.
"I think it’s a form of self-critique," she says. "On the Iraq War, though, I have to be rather critical of myself as well. I was one of those who chastised Gerhard Schröder at the time for risking the division of the West" for his vocal refusal to join the war effort.
She starts looking for something on her iPad. Perhaps the pathetic "proof" offered by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell of Iraq’s alleged WMD program? Or the article that she wrote for the Washington Post at the time defending the war?
Instead, she shows a picture that George W. Bush painted of her. The former president took up painting several years ago.
"He painted Berlusconi, Putin, everyone," says Merkel smiling. Perhaps it’s a form of therapy Bush uses to quiet his demons. At his ranch in Texas, Bush told her that his father thought his other son, Jeb, would have made the better president.
I doubt it.
The Spiegel piece is NOT "sympathetic" overall. It says 86 percent of Germans want an apology for her Russian positions. And, that's not all. There's her "legacy":
Her legacy has been wrapped in protective Styrofoam, as a kind of respect for what she achieved in her time at the top, her longevity. But such conversations also make it clear that her legacy is looking worse and worse: in Russia policy, in energy policy, in health policy, in climate policy, in digitalization.
Oof.
Near the end of the story, she claims she intended to address much of this in her last term. Really? It was almost half over by the time COVID started.
I hadn't originally planned to blog about the idiocy of the likes of Glenn Greenwald, having figured that calling him out on Twitter for his First Amendment idiocy over Twitter's ban of President Trump was enough.
Greenwald, you're mendacious and getting more so by the day. Traditional media already has right to publish, or not publish, what it chooses. If I don't want to run yr letter to the editor at my paper, I don't have to. Issue of monopolies is separate fr the 1st Amendment itself.
— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 9, 2021
While I'm here, though, let me note that I threw Michael Tracey under the bus, too:
Michael Tracey is a budget version of an even bigger First Amendment distorter than Glenn Greenwald. https://t.co/CgmsRz1eB5
— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 9, 2021
The real problem, though, arose Monday, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated she found the ban "problematic."
My thoughts there in this Tweet:
Angela Merkel, leader of a country that has no equivalent to the First Amendment, and a country that officially bans certain speech and expression, attacks Twitter for banning Trump. That's rich. https://t.co/oYaI4uWRGC
— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 11, 2021
That should say it all.
So, let's tackle all three — Greenwald and Tracey together as symptoms of a certain class of journos.
Is Merkel more hypocrite or idiot? It's true that Trump's blather has not risen to the level of neo-Nazi statements that are banned in Germany. On the other hand, he had in the past tweeted about such things as how the Proud Boys should "stand by." So, primarily, she's a hypocrite.
Greenwald and Tracey — and assuming the likes of Taibbi are saying similar — are also hypocrites. It would be charitable to just call them idiots, but way too charitable.
To expand on what I told Greenwald, and an email group that was formed to address a couple of Green Party issues but has largely been hijacked by a couple of ardent horseshoe theory practitioners, Glenn either knows better and is a hypocrite, or should know better, and being in a position to know better, is also a hypocrite. Plus, since this is a sort of First Amendment quasi-absolutism in reverse, he's being hoist by his own petard.
Twitter's actions would be just like me telling someone:
We have run a number of your letters to the editor that have come close to libel of local officials. We have flagged some of them with our editorial comments at the bottom. We delayed one letter for publication by a week. The only effect this seems to have had is to have been a red flag to a bull. Therefore, we are banning you from running any more letters to the editor.
As a newspaper editor or publisher, I would have EVERY First Amendment right to do that.
but, what about monopolism, which Glennwald has raised elsewhere?
First, that's not a First Amendment issue.
Second, Twitter isn't a monopoly. Both Parler and Gab exist, even if Parler is scrambling to find its own hosting servers.
Third? Glennwald (though not Merkel) also talked about Facebook's ban. Facebook IS a monopoly, essentially. And? Lots of us have talked about it being a monopoly, and about things like its deceptive trade practices, long before this, and other effects those things have had. Glennwald the not-a-leftist though he tries to play one occasionally on Twitter has pretty much been silent about that.
I'm more than all for breaking up Facebook for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with a misinterpretation of the First Amendment.
Also, were I the president of these United States, I would get rid of the official POTUS Twitter account. As in, delete it per normal Twitter protocol. I'd have the US government sue Jack Dorsey if he tried to stop that. I'd have all federal agencies and their PIO staff kill their respective Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and replace them with good old RSS feeds on White House and agency websites.
I haven't included Glennwald fellow travelers and quasi-travelers such as Media Myth Alert's W. Joseph Campbell, who in multiple posts last year appeared to accept #StartTheSteal claims and remains unrepentant, TV talking head lawyer Jonathan Turley, and surely whatever Matt Taibbi has said on this.
===
As for Jan. 6 and what we should say about what actually happened? Trump's "come to the Capitol" Tweet in isolation
arguably was an incitement to nothing. But Green Party members who make
that argument are full of shit. Somebody inside his White House (ie,
Gorka, Miller), even if not Trump himself, likely had an inkling of
wingnut social media being used to organize this and probably encouraged
Trump to tweet his invitation.
Let's also not
forget Trumpian Twitter context. This is the same president who, when
asked last summer to disavow the Proud Boys, instead tweeted about how
they should "stand by."
Angela Merkel may not know, or think of, the context. Glennwald certainly can if he so chooses. He has chosen not to.
Calling it a coup attempt might (or might not) be too harsh. Calling it an insurrection is not.
Nor is calling it sedition.
Just in case you're wondering? The federal criminal definition of sedition very much fits the action of leading actors on Jan. 6, specifically bullet points 2 and 3. This is why, contra the admins of the official Green Party Facebook group and people like Charles Keener here, it's important to know what percentage of self-identified Greens are conspiracy-thinking enough to consider this a "psyops."
In my blogging about the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria, the ones that allegedly crossed President Obama's red line, only for him to do nothing, I at first signed off on the UN report, proclaimed loudly by American mainstream media, that Assad — or at least, Assad's military — were pretty red-handedly guilty.
Well, not so fast.
By spring of 2014, Sy Hersh was pretty much demolishing that claim, as well as exposing the whole geopolitical and military background behind it. (In the current geopolitical climate, it's worth noting that someone from Russian intelligence gave British intelligence the chemical samples that led the Brits to tell Obama — "Assad did NOT do it.")
Also claiming "Assad did NOT do it"? The country's most interesting sub-5-foot politician, Denny the Dwarf, also known as Dennis Kucinich.
Denny has one other good point — there's a difference between Assad having chemical weapons, and Assad using them, whether sarin, or the relatively mild raw chlorine gas. (ISIS, by the way, has been accused of using mustard gas, scourge of WWI battlefields.)
And, even before the end of 2013, the Old Gray Lady had backed off its initial claims based on vector analysis of the rockets' paths, mainly because they had too short of a range to be traced back to Syrian army units. On the other hand, at least one could be traced, on the same vector, to a rebel unit that was within range to have used them. (And, the cheapness of the rocket warhead also is an indirect argument against Syrian military firing.
Robert Parry, a recognized former investigative reporter for the AP, has further analysis of both the NYT and Hersh pieces.
His conclusion? Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan was behind whichever group of rebels — and he believes it was rebels — who launched the 2013 attack.
Also claiming Assad did NOT do it? Erm, the UN itself over an earlier 2013 strike.
As for the current airstrike, it seems ever more clear that this was the Syrian Air Force attacking a rebel ground site that had the sarin. (Ted Postol, a weapons expert in academia is now claiming another option — that this was a false flag by rebels. That, I doubt. First, I'm not an explosives expert, but I think it would be hard to tell, under current Syrian situation, the difference between a deliberately set explosion in the ground, on the one hand, or an impact explosion by a bomblet or a rocket, on the other. Second, I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general. I know Theodore Postol was among those who refuted "Assad did it" in 2013. But, there's a more conventional refutation of "Assad did it" for this attack already out there. And all Postol says is "more likely," in contrasting this to the MSM option of aerial Syrian gas attack; he doesn't even consider the option of Syrian rockets hitting buried sarin. On the other hand, the UN backed up his earlier claims about Eastern Ghouta.)
That said, there's other contra-indications to "Assad did it."
Some people note the alleged difficulty of producing or storing sarin. I counter with Aum Shinrikyo and the Toyko subway attack. And, no, contra the "Assad did it" crowd, sarin, if in a relatively crude state, is not that hard to produce. (This ignores the possibility of government-produced sarin stolen by one group of rebels or another.) Some talk about the claims of the White Helmets about what they've allegedly seen Assad done, and how they're apolitical. First, most White Helmets claims have not been verified. Second, they're not apolitical. Next: torture and extra-judicial murder have all been documented by most players in the war. Use of chemical weapons has been alleged of most. Don't let neocons or liberal warhawks claim any of this is unique to Assad. Don't let them claim that pointing this out makes you an Assad defender. Finally, if they truly believe in regime change, ask them what they think the reasonable price is in "boots on the ground" — not reasonable for US public support first and foremost, but reasonable for getting the job done, not just to replace Assad, but replace him with someone better. The strawmanning from the mix of neocons and liberal hawks has gotten bad enough that I created a new blog post about it.
Make to the main thread.
If Parry et al are right on 2013, given Erdogan's own lurch toward authoritarianism having increased over the last four years, this makes Syria dangerous indeed. Yes, Erdogan has cuddled up more to Vladimir Putin's Russia in the past four years. At the same time, while not a full-blown Islamic fundamentalist, he has certainly exploited Islamic fundamentalism for his own political ends, and his personal inclinations surely tilt that way to some degree. In other words, Putin is feathering his bed with an asp.
That said, in Erdogan's case, cui bono? I don't have an immediate answer, and any potential angle may be at least as tangled as Syrian ethnic and religious political issues. In general, though, if he can limit the flow of refugees to his country, he can shake down the EU for more financial support, keep Syria destabilized enough to be weak, shake down the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf for money to do that, and cozy up with Putin enough by offering him help against more extremist Islamicist movements inside Russia.
And, that is 11-dimensional chess indeed.
(That said, this all sets aside who was behind the production of the chemicals that Assad's air force bombed in the recent issue. It also sets aside whether or not Assad, or Russia, or other players knew these rebels, whomever their backers are, knew that they had sarin, etc. That, in turn, makes Syria even more dangerous.)
For more on this issue, not only on how Erdogan stands to benefit, but on how Bashar al-Assad and Syria 2017 are similar to Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 2013, pre-Bush invasion, read below the fold.
So, here's my 2 cents worth of fingers. First, Greece is somewhat a loser. It's a loser not just because of the bad new deal, but because, as just-resigned Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis claims, Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras was and is exactly what Eurozone leaders have long claimed about him: vacillating and spineless. So, it's a loser because, unless Syriza replaces him, the Greeks don't have a real option to stand up to the EU. And, Syriza as a party winds up looking like a toothless tiger. The euro as a currency is somewhat dented, but it's not too bad a loser. France? Somewhat a loser. It was the biggest pusher for the creation of the euro as a joint currency after the collapse of the Soviet Union, precisely to restrain German financial hegemony. Françoise Hollande got the EU to paper over France-Germany differences, but it's clear that the big stick of German Iron Chancellor 2.0 Angela Merkel forced France to accept giving Greece as harsh of a deal as it got. Germany? A lot of people are claiming it overplayed its hand. However, the fact that it publicly displayed a card hand of wanting to give Greece a five-year boot shows that Merkel, along with her financial minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, knew exactly how close to the vest to play. And, the fact that other eurozone diplomats wanted to "teach Greece a lesson" only underscore this. Finally, the whole world is a loser if part of the results of this German-pushed deal force Greece to sell off historic world heritage assets.
First, have you heard about the hot new mixed drink sweeping
Central Europe?
The Berlin Boomerang is the hot new drink replacing the
Moscow Mule.
It’s composed of two parts schapps, a dash of sauerKraut
juice and a double pinch of bitters.
It's a favorite of Angela Merkel, the Iron Chancellor 2.0.
It’s often an apertif drink with the new Athenian dessert,
Brokelava.
Brokelava? It’s just like baklava, but with a few
differences.
You follow a baklava recipe, but cut out 30 percent of the
butter and don’t add the almonds or pistachios.
After it’s baked, you relayer it, add the nuts, but then
take 90 percent back out.
Germans love its austere taste; Greek tax collectors love it
after they chase it with three shots of ouzo.
Meanwhile, the European Union has recognized that a weak
financial union looks like the United States’ old Articles of Confederation.
Some folks are pushing for fuller unification.
To start it off, they have proposed a new “national” anthem
for the Eurozone.
Euro, Euro über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,
Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
Brüderlich zusammenhält.
Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
Von Ebro bis Ägäisch,
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!
(Translated, first the original, then mine:
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world,
when, for protection and defense,
it always stands brotherly together .
From the Meuse to
the Memel,
From the Adige to
the Belt,
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!
Euro, Euro above all things,
Above everything in the world,
when, for protection and defense,
it always stands brotherly together.
From the Meuse to
the Memel,
From Ebro to Aegean
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!)
Voila! European Union! Best pictured when sung by the Iron Chancellor 2.0.
Sen. Betty Crocker has been probably the most ardent blank-check defender of any and every National Security Agency spying program since 9/11. So, it's a surprising twist indeed when Feinstein says she strongly opposes spying on foreign leaders.
And, as I blogged yesterday, the White House's original non-denial denials eventually morphed into semi-explicit admissions of guilt about spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others.
Meanwhile, the super-snoopers have come up with a new denial, which may actually be true, yet a non-denial denial at the same time.
In France and Spain, the agency says those countries' intelligence agencies were the spies of record.
This may well be true. In Britain, we know that General Communications Headquarters has a formal agreement with the NSA; something at least halfway similar also exists with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That said, without going into details, Anglo-American sharing of intelligence gathering has long been known, and has been suspected of being pretty deep.
So, a few takeaways.
First, if true, this is like some European countries, in other instances, hiding behind the skirts of NATO, or in France's case, hiding behind the US's Security Council vetos at the UN.
Second, if this is, per the claims of NSA head Keith Alexander, based on misinterpretation of one of those magic slides of Edward Snowden, I'm sure we'll hear more from Snowden soon enough.
Third, this is still only France and Spain. Alexander's latest claim doesn't govern Germany. And therefore, doesn't fully address Sen. Betty Crocker's pique.
Fourth, we still have no indication that in France or Spain, even, national intelligence agencies would have spied on their own heads of state.
Fifth, there's no indication, even if Alexander has some truth, as to how much of this spying would have been done anyway, and how much was on some sort of contract to the NSA.
Sixth, everybody's linking to the Wall Street Journal, whose news page has become more and more politicized under the Reign of Murdoch. Let's hold off on assigning too high of truth value to the story, eh?
Seventh, to the degree this is true, per my first takeaway, this is as ugly as European countries bitching about extraordinary renditions by the CIA a decade ago, until it became clear that some of them (et tu, Sweden of Julian Assange charges) were willing participants in enabling this.
Eighth, and last for now: This is going to get uglier yet, if there's an ounce of truth in the WSJ story.
===
Per a friend on Facebook, though, don't expect Dianne Feinstein's touching concern for Angela Merkel being in the NSA's gunsights to extend to We the People, though.
Update, Sept. 18: The UN investigation seems to tie the attacks
to senior officers of President Bashar Assad. Whether they were
following orders or not may still not be final, but the linked New York
Times story indicates the answer is yes. That
said, per the oft-cited piece by William Polk at the Atlantic? His "cui
bono" was, and still is, a good question. And, if part of why he wrote
that piece was pushback, given America's generally poor history of
regime change in the Middle East, the neocons leading the charge again
on this one and Obama not having a Syria exit plan, the shoot-first warmongers can still look themselves in the mirror. Now, back to the original blog post.
I certainly don't agree with everything Vlad the Impaler, aka Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, wrote in an op-ed that's in the New York Times and The Guardian.
Let's just say that blind, or self-delusional, or self-inflating, pigs can still find acorns, even multiple ones.
Yes, his invocation of the pope as part of the reason to oppose strikes on Syria is funny. His discussion of how the "Big 5" permanent members of the UN Security Council got absolute veto powers conveniently overlooks the fact that his predecessor leader and country, Joe Stalin of the USSR, pushed for that.
Even more laughable is his worries that America is too randomly attacking other countries. That said, most of the worst against Chechnya happened under Boris Yeltsin, not Putin, who just uses natural-gas based economic blackmail.
And, his claim that "God created us equal" is massive hypocrisy, when he clearly believes gay people aren't equal.
All those caveats aside, there's two important points he makes.
The first is about realpolitik. If John Kerry is going to consult The Phantom of the Chilean Opera, Henry Kissinger, the alleged master of realpolitik, then he should listen to Putin:
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict
between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are
few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough
al-Qaida fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government.
The United States State Department has designated al-Nusra Front and
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition,
as terrorist organizations.
This gets back to the whole, broader issue of nation-building, and how US presidents, US governments, and the US bipartisan foreign policy establishment continues to think it can create democracies out of nothing, pick "winners" and "losers" in this process (to riff on libertarians), and force this down countries' throats.
That, in turn, gets to the other issue, of American exceptionalism, and how we think "we know better" because ...
We're America, fuck yeah (apologies for the "French," and for much more of it in the video.)
That's the best version of that video, by the way, in my opinion.
Anyway, despite all my previous caveats, Putin's last paragraph is spot on about this. The "Assad did it" fanatics, besides re-asking, "do we know who did it," need to read Putin on American exceptionalism:
"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States' policy is "what makes America different. It's what makes us exceptional". It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."
Throwing out my previous caveats, plus the new one of Putin buttering up Obama, the American exceptionalism warnings are well taken.
Basically, this whole excursus and debate on Obama's stance toward Syria in part reflects how liberals and left-liberals in America split on seeing American foreign policy, as I see it. And, I proudly stand accused of being some sort of left-liberal on this issue. Most American liberals on foreign policy? Wilsonian interventionism, when preached by liberals rather than neoconservatives, is the foreign policy equivalent of neoliberalism.
I
am in no way saying Putin's perfect. That said, as far as
surrender/punish, again, punish who? Remember Iraq, where Hussein kept
telling us, I don't have any WMDs, and ... he didn't? Here, it could be
rogue generals, or al Qaeda groups. That's why, again, we have to have a
reasonably surety of who did it. Then, if it's not Assad, but rogue generals, the Free Syrian Army, or Al Nusra, we have to
have a reasonable game plan for what all our steps are.
I don't think Obama has a game plan for anybody but Assad, and that's part of what scares me. We were lucky, so far, to muddle through Libya, ignoring the Islamicists attacking our spook shack in Benghazi. Syria's far more complicated as well as more dangerous.
And, to restrain America, there's only two people in the world who have a chance of doing that.
Contra Putin, Pope Francis is not the other one besides him. It's Xi Jinping, president of China. Actually, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has enough weight in NATO to be somewhat of an anchor weight, though not enough to stop him.
If some people don't like that, well, sorry.
I'd rather have America ask more questions first, before shooting, if we want to riff on an old cops joke.
Note any international readers: These are largely US-based, but still may have a bit of international play.
1. The so-called "fiscal cliff" will finally get a deal on ... wait for it ... Jan. 7. Stock market will continue to sag, but not totally tank until that date, therefore undercutting the Pete Petersons of the world. Both Republicans and Democrats will do some can-kicking, postponing many details for discussion — until after the 2014 elections. GOP will "bite" on what was originally the offer by President Barack Obama, aka Dear Leader, for "chained CPI" on Social Security, and pressure Senate Democrats to "lump it."
And, yes, I know, there's claims that a "deal" is just around the corner, as of 7 p.m. Eastern time Dec. 31. Read a story like this, though, and you get a Swiss cheese of caveat holes.
2. Speaking of that, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will make only minor changes to filibuster rules.
3. President Obama will offer only relatively minor changes in whatever gun control legislation he sends to Congress, and will make the announcement of such legislation itself relatively mild. (As in sending it to Congress after 5 p.m. on a Friday.)
4. Angela Merkel's coalition, the unwieldy one, will fall apart in Germany sometime this year over a mix of resentment toward the eurozone's south, the Free Democrats' stance on nuclear power, and a general weariness.
5. John Kerry will become US Secretary of State. Rep. Edward Markey will win the special election to replace him in the Senate.
6. Chuck Hagel will ultimately withdraw his name from Secretary of Defense consideration after lack of support from Obama. At this point, I won't even venture a guess over who's next on Obama's list. 7. India's rape-murder tragedy will be the last straw for its current government ad will force parliamentary elections some time in 2013. The Congress party will suffer disastrous losses. The new BJP government will get more aggressive against both native Maoists and Pakistan. The BJP will not improve the lives of Indian women, though. 8. Climate change legislation will not even get considered by the US. But, the European Union will hold firm on its airline carbon taxes. 9. The Texas Legislature's new budget will not only be more hardcore antiabortion, it will tighten the belt on health care for the poor and have no major new money for schools. The fact that Texas Parks and Wildlife is still soliciting for we the taxpayer to make direct donations underscores this prediction. (And, no, I won't make a donation myself; it's called "enabling the wingnuts" — as in a spouse/lover enabling an alcoholic/addict.) 10. The state of Texas will lose the school finance lawsuit while the Lege is in session, but even with an expedited appeals route, appeals will not be done in time. 11. The state of Texas will lose all its appeals and, shades of the past, have to have multiple special sessions of the legislature before passing an acceptable school finance bill. 12. The US will sell drones to South Korea, which will escalate tensions with China, both directly and vis-a-vis Japan. 13. Britain's Liberal Democrats, for reasons unknown, will remain in coalition with Conservatives.
14. Bradley Manning will eventually accept a crappy plea-bargain deal, while the British government and Julian Assange will remain at deadlock all year.
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Culture
1. "Lincoln" will win Oscars for best actor, director, producer, cinemetography and possibly screenplay.
2. Some rock star past the age of the 60 will become a father.
3. The Minnesota Orchestra (management) will refuse to settle its strike/lockout with its musicians and the season will be washed out. 4. Fox will announce plans for a new late-night talk show. 5. PBS will revamp "News Hour." 7. Whether to Europe or Native Americans, a number of US museums will make major repatriations of art and artifacts. 8. John Adams will start work on a new opera.
The European Union (minus, perhaps, London's financial sector) probably should be grateful for that, too. And, if Merkel's plans for the how and why of EU reform are correct, the rest of the developed world, including non-neoliberals/financial conservatives in the U.S., should also be grateful.
The New York Times has a good news/news analysis piece that's basically a "face off" set-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel vs. U.S. President Barack Obama.
It's clear she, and she as representative of German thought, thinks less of financiers than does Obama (or British Prime Minister David Cameron). And, while Team Obama may be right that she's overly indulgent of traditional German fears of a repeat of 1920s hyperinflation rather than Germany's own serious hit of the Depression in the early 1930s that brought Hitler to power, Team Obama is wrong about much of the rest.
That includes the U.S. having a relatively lax attitude toward "moral hazard" of financiers. (By the way, for the biggest of the big in the U.S., that is NOT a new attitude, tea partiers, etc. It goes back a full century or more. JPMorganChase's various predecessors got nearly a dozen government bailouts of different types. In turn, in 1907, and before, old man Morgan himself led a pre-Federal Reserve "bailout" of the federal government.
Even if the likes of Merkel aren't totally right, they're right enough on this issue. We need Merkel to succeed, to be a counterweight to U.S. neolliberalism. And, if the British version of neoliberalism ultimately gets ground beneath the wheel of the new EU, in the long run, or even medium run, it might be better for Britain, too.
Given that both the U.S.and China have grown their economies through often bubbly methods, the more stereotypically stolid German way might just be the way to go more.
And, while I'm not going to deny that Krugman has legitimate concerns about austerity, I still think that calling the current situation a "depression" is probably a bit hyperbolic. The fact is that, in the better-off areas of the eurozone, unemployment is a lot lower than here. As for the PIIGS countries in Europe? Portugal's nor horrible. Italy actually has lower unemployment than the U.S. Ireland is not good, but ... let's see in the next year.
Greece? Let it leave the Eurozone. That said, it never should have been let in, to be honest. Spain? A fair amount of its housing bubble was British-caused. Strange that David Cameron doesn't talk much about that.
It's clear that a 30-year period of reckoning for Great Britain vis-a-vis the EU has finally come due. Britain must choose whether to be part of a more financially integrated EU, even if it stays out of the Eurozone, or decide what it wants to do outside of that.
And, of course, this is all complicated by politics within the UK.
Assuming that financial services is that much a part of the British economy, I think Tories have to ask whether it will shrink more as part of the new EU or outside of it.
Frankly, a tighter monetary EU will, eventually, boost the Continent's role in finances, especially if any directives from Brussels are ultimately influenced by glances at Berlin. So, if Prime Minister David Cameron wants to walk around in EU purgatory, or even, as Tory backbenchers clearly want, leave the Union entirely, I think he's an idiot.
Sign on. Britain's financial sector will take some sort of hit, true. But, not immediately, and not in a way that Cameron, if he has any brains (questionable) can't actually fulfill his talk about leading a new type of Conservative Party.
The option of playing at the EU edges? Assuming Merkel and Sarkozy can pull something off, that's not a long-term option.
Cameron's stiff upper lip talk otherwise, larger EU-27 institutions will lose relative power if the narrower eurozone gets new financial strength, new financial regulations strength and, above all, is less unwieldy and more open to easier reform of governance. Eventually, the other "outsiders," even those already given tentative eurozone approval, will have to sign off on the bottom line, too. So, unless Britain can convince a minority of "outsider 10" to follow it, a two-tiered EU just doesn't sound that plausible.
So, ditching the EU entirely? Unhelpful. Despite new openness on banking, Switzerland's tight world would make it equal to an independent UK as an EU counterweight. The rest of the Commonwealth? Canada's tied to the US. Australia is largely independent. Other countries matter less.
Labour would, albeit reluctantly, surely take the plunge, also liking more of Brussels' regulatory powers and ideas.
Per Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, choose wisely, Mr. Cameron. You may not get a second chance.
And, per U.S. conservatives, don't root for Cameron to choose to opt out. The "special relationship" will only be diminished if Britain itself is.
At least not at the head of a government.
That said, if this leads to a referendum, Labour won't be able to do any "straddling" itself.
And, whoever leads the country, if Britain winds up in financial outer darkness, does it wind up as more a "lapdog of the US"? Thoughts for all British political leaders.
It's not the choice of the EU vs. a more independent UK. That ultimate 30-year reckoning on alignment may be coming due.
Roger Cohen agrees about that and about Cameron's short-sighted stupidity.
If (it) fails, bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely
crash, and ... economies would crater. Nations ...
could see their economic output fall temporarily by as much as X percent, according to ... forecasters. The financial and economic pain
would spread west and east as (Europe) and Asia get ensnared in the
credit freeze and their exports ... collapse.
Oh, yeah, October 2008. Wall Street's collapse was going to destroy America.
Of course, Wall Street wasn't allowed to collapse.
BUT, while I don't agree with tea partiers about not having acted in 2008, as well as disagreeing with the idea of running a nation without some sort of central banking system, it's clear that the no-strings TARP "cure" for Wall Street wasn't a cure for the American economy in general, either in 2008 or 2001.
So, let's hope that Western Europe's version of paper-pushing technocrats attaches some strings to Eurozone reform. If Greece needs the boot, then boot it. If the European Central Bank, or the degree of "federalism" emanating from Brussels, needs to be strengthened, then strengthen it. And, if member nations can't agree to that, then wind down the Eurozone.
We probably could have "wound down" Wall Street, too, if its kleptocrats refused to accept tight strings as part of TARP. Unfortunately, the corruption of mainstream bipartisan American politicians, including in having deliberately reduced shareholders' power to sue corporate boards, meant that the wind-down option here in America wasn't that viable. A Darwinian Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase likely would have survived. A vulture-like low-feeding George Soros would have repeated his 1998 international exploits on an even grander scale.
That said, because Europe's crisis is in part a monetarist crisis, or so it seems, failure to achieve a good resolution one way or the other probably will enable the Soroses of the world even more than the Goldman Sachses.
At the same time, because the Eurozone "project" isn't the same as the U.S., the whispered-about possible cataclysm isn't likely, should Eurozone ministers "fail."
I actually see the current crisis as worse, from the financial world POV, and from member nations' POV, than the U.S. debt supercommission, but not as serious as TARP. Germany IS too big to fail. The U.K., which has problems enough of its own, is outside the Eurozone. The Netherlands is fine. If push comes to shove, for France, Nicolas Sarkozy will perform financial cunnilingus on Angela Merkel, if necessary, to bind Gaul that tightly to the Deutschland. Both Euro and non-Euro parts of Scandanavia are doing well, too, as is Switzerland.
That all said, per my one poll on the left, it is indeed possible that the combined European Union economy, including Eurozone and non-Eurozone members, will fall behind the U.S. as a result. It is even vaguely possible that the EU, not just the Eurozone, could at least "reformulate," if not break up.
And, maybe it needs to.
Just don't throw a TARP over it.
If nothing else, maybe the U.S. can still teach Europe a thing or two -- about what not to do.
I appreciate that the Muslim Brotherhood claims it represents a third option, neither secular democracy nor authoritarian theocracy.
But, what does that mean? We still don't know in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the Taliban would win elections today; it won acclamations or whatever in the past. We had a brief Muslim democracy in Algeria in the past.
I mean, I'm not Faux News paranoid about the Muslim Brotherhood, or even close to it. But, I'm not buying that it's all sweetness and light, either; there's a PR line that's being told to us.
Let's put it this way: If I said "Christian democracy" I could go one of two ways. Were I in Europe, I'd be thinking Angela Merkel. Were I in the U.S., I'd be thinking Sarah Palin.
While I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood is Sarah Palin, I don't think it's Angela Merkel either. And, it's at least as close to Palin as it is to Merkel, I'm guessing.
Quite possibly. It appears the German presidential election is a de facto confidence vote on Chancellor Angela Merkel. Judging by the choice of her candidate, she deserves to lose. That said, if she does, will the Social Democrats undo old statements and agree to coalition with the New Left, aka leftover Communists, if new parliamentary elections are called?
In the 1998 sense of how he bet against southeast Asian currencies, that is. Based on that history, and his haraguing of German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her planed austerity measures, one has to wonder.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is finding his shot at the European Union presidency taking a sudden swan dive, primarily due to lack of support from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Why? Politics. The two want a leader from one of Europe’s center-right parties, like themselves.
Also hurting Blair’s candidacy — Britain being outside the Eurozone. What puzzles m e is why this hasn’t been held against him all along. Especially since he never did hold up his promise to push this.
Interestingly, parties of the center-left in Europe have kind of written off the presidency already, and are focusing on the EU foreign ministry. Read the full Guardian article for more such details.
Angela Merkel, soon to be officially installed into her second term as German chancellor, is unlikely to adopt Free Democrats’ more radical ideas. Expect m ore friendlyness toward nuclear power plants, some modest tax cuts far short of what the FDP wants, and little change on Germany unemployment policies.
On the eve of the big G20 confab, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the Continent is definitely not interested in a $2 trillion (€ 1.45 trillion or so) stimulus package.
And it wasn’t just Germany.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Spanish Finance Minister Pedro Solbes said the same thing.
So Brown will be an impotent, impotent G20 host while the Conservatives look for Labor to fall further in polling.
Perhaps Merkel, Sarko and others even spoke loud enough for not only President Barack Obama, but also Paul Krugman, to hear.
Is Gordo looking more and more like a beggar, perhaps one from a Dickens novel?
Beyond that, the rebuke, by Germany as well as France, was directed at the U.S. as well as the U.K. It follows on suggestions yesterday that Obama needs to re-regulate banking first, THEN worry about spending more money.
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